


The Bayett Inn

by DictionaryWrites, Johannes_Evans



Series: Magic Beholden [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Contracts, Divination, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Hotels, Magical Inheritance, Magical Realism, Original Character(s), Original Mythology, Plot, Power Dynamics, Urban Fantasy, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25472278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johannes_Evans/pseuds/Johannes_Evans
Summary: At the age of twenty-three, Savannah O'Callaghan comes into an inheritance of power that has been in her family for generations: this power, so she discovers, is a curse and not a blessing.
Series: Magic Beholden [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844758
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20
Collections: Magic Beholden





	The Bayett Inn

Angela Moscona’s office was full to the brim.

When Savannah initially knocked on the door, the “Come in!” was muffled, and just in turning the door handle she struggled to get inside, having to force it forward slightly to push past the veritable mountain of paper on the other side, pushing it back and cramming herself through the little gap in the doorway – all she could actually manage, as it would be impossible to open it fully. Stacks upon stacks of folders, papers, and file boxes were laid on every single surface, the piles on top of filing cabinets and shelves going all the way up to the ceiling, and tiny patches of grey-brown carpet peeked through between yet more papers that littered the floor.

“Please,” Angela said, with an airy gesture of her hand. “Sit down.”

For a long moment, Savannah was frozen, wildly searching the room for something that resembled a seat, and then she saw, buried beneath a half dozen file boxes, an extremely battered chair before Angela’s desk. Hesitantly, she took a step forward, and then took up the stack from the base, placing it with no small amount of awkward uncertainty on top of another pile. It swayed for a half-second, a silent threat, but then went still, and Savannah sank into the chair.

Once upon a time, it had had armrests, and leather cushioning on the back and the seat, and maybe once the legs were a shiny chrome: now, it was an almost uniform dirty grey, and only frayed patches of thread and wood board showed where the cushions had once been.

“Sonita?” Angela asked.

“Savannah,” Savannah said.

“Savannah,” Angela repeated, and for the first time since Savannah had entered, looked up from her computer, which looked to have been manufactured sometime in 1987. Having been hunched over the keys, she now sat back, her shoulders relaxing, and Savannah saw that she was quite a big woman – she couldn’t tell what height she was sat down at her desk, but she had broad shoulders and a hefty, square breast, her arms thick with muscle and fat alike. She was built like a strongman, Savannah thought – not one of those people with the chiselled muscle, but the real ones that could lift up cars or several barrels at once. She had rounded features, her hair in a bun, lips that were painted with a lipstick closer to brown than red, and she wore venom-green horn rimmed spectacles high up on her nose, but she took them off to look at Savannah. “You’re here to interview for the housekeeping opening.”

“Uh, yeah,” Savannah said, leaning forward, but she flinched at a sudden ominous creak from the chair beneath her. Freezing, she waited for it to crumble under her weight, but it held. “I, erm, I don’t have any previous experience, but I’m a really hard worker, and I—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Angela said, making another gesture of her hand, which was neatly buffed and manicured, the nails very short. “You live here in Bristol?”

“Yeah, I have a flat by Queen Square,” Savannah said, tapping her fingers awkwardly against her own leg. “I was sharing with a friend but she’s had to move back to Liverpool, and before I was on this zero hours contract and they kept— Like, you know, I need a job with regular hours so I can make enough to…” Savannah trailed off. She wasn’t sure if she was being too demanding, didn’t want to make a bad first impression, but Angela kept her gaze, looking focused.

“You want regular hours,” Angela said plainly. “So that your income is more reliable.”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Angela said, and leaned back in her seat to pull open a desk drawer. It wasn’t an easy job: she had to tug on it hard, and when she finally dragged it open it moved with a squeal of old wood, but she reached inside for a stack of papers, paging through them. “The job’s pretty simple. You’d be joining our housekeeping team here at the Bayett Inn – cleaning rooms, changing sheets, carpets, turning down beds…”

“Yeah,” Savannah said. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“It’s hard work, eight hour shifts, every morning, nine ‘til five. Two days off per week. You okay working weekends?”

“Yeah,” Savannah said.

“Not every weekend,” Angela said. She spoke sharply, quickly, not unkindly, but smart as a whip, and she kept her gaze on Savannah’s face. Her eyes were a dark, deep brown behind the light lenses of her glasses. It was disarming, and Savannah couldn’t help but fidget slightly in her seat, even though she tried to keep still, tried to listen without moving. What did she look like? Angela didn’t seem to notice, but… “Your shifts would be changeable, depending on the roster.”

“Yes,” Savannah said.

“How old are you, Savannah?”

“Twenty-three,” she said.

“Your last name…” Angela murmured thoughtfully, glancing down at the paper and then looking back to her, her brow furrowing. “O’Callaghan.”

“Yes?”

“You’re Irish?”

“My family is. County Clare, but my mam and da came over to Bristol before I was born.”

“Any relation to Jimmy O’Callaghan? Black hair, green eyes, scar on his jaw, just here?” Angela gestured to the side of her own jaw, touching one corner of it, and Savannah nodded her head. “He used to have this streak of white, right down the middle of his head, like a bolt of lightning had bleached his hair.”

“Yeah, that was my uncle, Jimmy, but he died a while back. Car accident.”

“In ’09,” Angela murmured, nodding her head slowly. “We used to know Jimmy, he’d pop into the bar a few nights a week.”

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

Savannah did think about him, often – she knew not everyone was close with their uncles and aunts, but she’d always been close with Uncle Jimmy, and he’d often babysat for her when she was a little girl. She’d only been fourteen when he’d died. She still had a solid image of the man in her head, tall and square and skinny, always looking like someone had put him together on a wooden frame, with a way of holding his shoulders and moving his limbs like he was being puppeteered on strings, lumbering with a weird upswing. He’d always been smiling when she was around, always, but he was virtually always tired, and she remembered being more aware of it as she’d grown older. He’d worked in a bookies near the town centre, and she remembered him telling her all the different classifications for the horse and the dog racing, how people placed bets, how they worked…

“You knew about his job on the side?” Angela asked.

“The landscaping business? Yeah. He was never too good at that, though, people just hired him to mow lawns.”

“No… No, the other job.”

“The photography? He only really did portraits of horses and dogs, and only then, when he could get them to stay still—”

“No,” Angela said, coughing. On another woman it might have been a delicate cough, but Angela wasn’t a delicate woman: the cough was strong, loud, and hidden against her fist. “His _other_ other job.”

Savannah was quiet for a moment, awkwardly shifting in his seat. “He said he only did that for a few years when he was in his twenties, and that he was quite a good dancer, but that no one ever touched him below the belt or the—”

“No!” Angela said, wincing, but she was smiling a funny sort of smile, and when she met Savannah’s gaze again, she laughed. The rapid, quickfire nature of the meeting faded somewhat, and Angela softened. It was as if the very air around them began flowing more slowly, not quite as urgently, and Savannah felt herself relax. “Sorry. Just… ten years, it’s a long time. I forgot how he always had a side job going on. No, love, I meant the divination.”

“Oh,” Savannah said softly, and she smiled slightly herself, remembering the little drawer in Uncle Jimmy’s hallway that was full with all kinds of fortune telling paraphernalia, all the dice, the bags of loose tea leaves, the pendula, and the strings… “He was always a bit crap at most things. He used to carry a tarot deck on him, but whenever he did someone a reading, all the cards would say Death.”

“They did,” Angela agreed, her smile not faltering, but her eyes seemed to harden a little. “Well, he ever showed you the stones?”

“Of course,” Savannah said, smiling wider at the memory. He’d had other stones, of course – he’d had flat stones carved with runic symbols, and others that were inscribed with letters, but his favourite stones had been a bag of milky-white stones that were sea-washed to smoothness, always hanging from a little velvet bag on his beltloop, next to his keys. “They were the only thing he could do an accurate reading with. Every time the Grand National came around, he’d do a reading for my dad, said he’d tell him two winners so long as he betted on at least two losers too. My dad wouldn’t know which four were which until he’d bet on them all.”

“Did he?” Angela asked, and then she laughed, putting her fingers over her mouth. “That’s just like Jimmy.” She sighed, fond, and then asked, “And the stones… He ever used to tell you, that if you listened to the stones…?”

Savannah stared at Angela, her lips parting in surprise, and she felt a strange hiver run up her spine as she remembered. It had been a long time since she’d thought of that, of Uncle Jimmy’s husky, hoarse voice as he’d leaned back in his chair, smiled at her with yellow teeth, some missing, said, “ _If you listen to the stones, Sav, you know, you have to be careful_ …”

“They’ll listen back,” Savannah said softly. “Yeah. He used to say that a lot, I never… I never really understood what he meant. Something about sharing my problems with other people.”

“Something like that,” Angela agreed. “You believe in ghosts, Savannah?”

“Ghosts?” Savannah repeated. It was a funny question, not one Savannah had expected, and she hesitated for a second as she took in Angela’s stance, which was calculatedly casual, her shoulders loose, leaning back in her seat, but… There was a significance in the way she asked the question, like it was important, more important than she could say. Did she believe in ghosts?

“Hotels can be spooky places,” Angela said, shrugging her shoulders. “Coming from the niece of a man like Jimmy, I’d be surprised if you didn’t believe in any of it.”

Savannah thought for a second, glancing down at her knees beneath the scuffed, laddered fabric of her tights – and these were her best tights, too. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I believe in ghosts, but I’ve never seen one. Uncle Jimmy used to say they weren’t as common as people think they are, that they were usually at places of significance. Not because the big historical people were more _important_ , per se, but because of all the people that passed through, all that history, that energy, you know? And their energy placed significance in that place, recognised it as home, or important, or…

“That’s why you don’t really get a haunted Asda, but castles, palaces, stuff like that, that’s more common. I guess it makes sense that hotels would be spooky, you know, all the people coming through, leaving again…”

“This building’s been here nearly three hundred years,” Angela said quietly. “There’s ghosts here, literally or otherwise. A hotel like this, big and old, and working in the evenings sometimes, it isn’t for the faint of heart.”

“I’m not faint of heart,” Savannah said, pressing her knees together as she shifted in the seat. “Mrs Moscona—”

“Angela. Please.”

“Angela. I just… I can learn on the job, honestly, I can do this.”

Angela watched Savannah for a long moment, the silence in the room feeling weighted and heavy. Savannah dug her fingers into the sides of her knees, her thighs, leaning forward. She felt less like she was being analysed, and more like she was being put on a set of scales and measured, held up to the light and examined for some flaw she wasn’t sure about.

“Alright,” Angela said softly. “Why don’t we walk along with the housekeeping staff now, you can see how they get on?”

“Thank you,” Savannah whispered. “Thank you.”

The halls of the Bayett Inn were brightly lit and airy, with cream-coloured walls and carpet a light, delicate blue. It was probably the cleanest carpet Savannah had ever seen in her life, and she almost felt guilty for walking over it, feeling the fresh, spongey fabric give slightly beneath her feet with each step that she took. Light streamed in from the windows on the inside of the building, looking out over the gardens.

The main body of the hotel was shaped like a rectangle, with gardens and a huge greenhouse making up the central square, five storeys high before it gave way to slate roofing, and other wings split off from the main building. She wondered what the hotel must look like from above, like some big spider, maybe.

Looking out from the window, Savannah could see the nearest garden flourishing, grown up with broad, leafy trees, showing off an array of oranges and browns, dotted in amidst a dozen shades of vibrant, verdant green. It was a sunny day, and she could see birds flitting between the tree branches, all different colours, their iridescent feathers glinting in the shining sun, so that they were little streaks of colour moving back and forth. On the other side of a small covered over walkway, on which was growing ivy and rambling roses, there was another garden… And in the centre, three storeys high with a huge dome of crisscrossing glass panes, was a greenhouse.

“One of our dining areas is in there,” Angela said, looking over Savannah’s shoulder, and Savannah turned to look at her, thoughtful. “The second floor of the greenhouse is suspended platforms, and so we have a dining area, but it’s not as big as our main dining room, of course.”

“It’s a five-star restaurant,” Savannah said, “like the hotel, right?”

“That’s right,” Angela said crisply, bustling down the corridor ahead of Savannah, and Savannah had to hurry to keep up with her, looking at the numbers as they passed them by. “The restaurant caters to both dining halls, and it’s a big kitchen, a lot of chefs working on the line.”

Savannah looked to the door numbers as they passed them by on each side. 134, 135, 136… The numbers on each door were made of perfectly clean silver, each door clean and perfectly painted, the door handles polished to the same silver sheen. There was no key card slot on any of the doors – instead, there were neat little keyholes, for the old-fashioned keys.

“Now, here in the main body of the building, there are one hundred rooms to each floor, up to the fourth floor, but the ground floor only has fifty – each floor has two lifts, two dumbwaiters, a few laundry chutes, and linen closets, storage closets. If you take the job, you’ll have a ring of keys, which will allow you entrance to each closet, and you’ll have a skeleton key for the rooms.”

“You don’t have key cards?”

“No,” Angela said, and Savannah saw a housekeeping trolley ahead of them in the corridor, neatly set against one wall. “We use mortise keys that are individualised to each room, and housekeeping have skeleton keys that work on each floor. Ionut!”

Savannah hesitated at Angela’s shoulder as she stopped beside the housekeeping trolley, and a man stepped out from the open room marked 142. He was pale and slim, a little shorter than average for a man, with thick black hair coiffed back from his head. His skin was so white that it almost looked as if it had a powdery undertone, pink showing at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, and he dressed all in black, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his shirt collar open enough that she could see the shade of the chain around his neck.

“Hallo,” Ionut said, speaking with a strong Eastern European accent, and he put out his right hand. Savannah stepped forward, taking his hand to shake it: it was a much softer handshake than she expected, his grip loose, and he smiled at her with startlingly white teeth. “I am Ionut, I work with housekeeping.”

“This is Savannah,” Angela said. “She’s thinking of joining the housekeeping team.”

“Oh,” Ionut said, and Savannah watched his eyes as they took her in, scanning her face like he was looking for something in it. He had a nice nose, she thought – angular and with sharp angles to it, handsome, like someone had sculpted it to be carefully symmetrical. “And, um, where are you… from?”

“Er, Liverpool, originally, but my family are from Ireland, and I’ve lived in Bristol since I was twelve,” Savannah said. Ionut’s expression was blank for just a second, and she didn’t miss the way he glanced over Savannah’s shoulder to Angela before he smiled.

“Bristol is nice city,” Ionut said pleasantly. “Angela, the laundry team have already been through, stripped beds, so now I am cleaning, this is last room on floor. I am up on third floor, then, but Federico and Wanda are still working here.”

“How many people are on the housekeeping team?” Savannah asked.

“We are D-Team, we mostly do main body of building here, our team is nineteen, but you would make twenty,” Ionut said when Angela didn’t speak, clasping his hands neatly in front of his belly. His fingernails were a little longer than she’d expect for a man, slightly sharp, pointed. “A-Team and C-Team, and then also E-Team, they are other teams of about same number, cover different wings of the hotel. Lots of housekeepers, lots of different departments, many rooms.”

“What about the B-Team?” Savannah asked, noting the missed letter, and Ionut laughed.

Once more, his gaze flitted to Angela, but when she said nothing, he answered. “B-Team are touchy, yes? They do their job, we are not talking to them. B-Team are… _uppity_.”

“The B-Team aren’t uppity,” Angela said. “They’re just particular about their territory. You won’t see them, anyway, Savannah, they work in two consecutive shifts between 10pm and 8am.”

“Only five-hour shifts?” Savannah asked.

“I like you,” Ionut said, tapping the side of his handsome nose. “ _Smart_ , hm? You pick patterns, count quickly? Is very good, clever.”

“She’s Jimmy O’Callaghan’s niece,” Angela said, and Ionut’s smile softened, his body language relaxing a little. He reached out, as if he was going to touch Savannah’s arm, but then he didn’t, his hand hovering awkwardly in the space between them, his fingers loosely curling in on the first. He looked at her face again, and this time his gaze settled on her hair, looking over it.

“It wasn’t genetic,” Savannah said. “The white streak in his hair. He fell off a ladder when he was in his twenties, hit his head. It’s called poliosis, it means that the hair doesn’t produce the melanin it used to, so it loses the colour.”

“Yes,” Ionut said slowly. “You have from physical hit, or from skin cancer… Uh, if you have big shock, traumatic thing, this can cause white hairs. Body reacts in strange ways to stress, you know. Strange strange.” Ionut had very round eyes. They were a deep, shining brown, and they were very expressive – now they expressed something Savannah couldn’t really define.

“We’ll leave you to it, Ionut,” Angela said. “Savannah, I’ll show you some more of the floor.”

They moved around the floor, and Savannah saw some of the other housekeepers, but wasn’t introduced to them, even as they went up the stairs to the other floors. There were multiple teams to streamline the process: the laundry team went through vacated rooms and stripped out dirty linen and dirty towels; housekeepers went through vacated rooms for a clean and to put out new sheets and towels, as well as providing housekeeping services for rooms that were occupied; checkers came through to ensure that the newly turned over rooms were up to standard.

“It’s maze-like,” Angela said as they descended via one of the corner stairwells, and Savannah exhaled her relief to hear her say it. It _was_ labyrinthine on the lower floors – corridors branched off to other wings of the hotel, toward fire escapes or complicated networks of closets and storage areas, and she’d struggled to keep track of exactly where they were, even though the numbers were clearly printed on the doors, and signposts were always pointing you to different wings, down to the reception, out to the dining hall… “You’ll get the hang of it as you walk the hotel, and for the first week you’ll be alongside other housekeepers as you get your bearings, learn the ropes.”

Savannah nodded as they came down to the first floor landing, and she hesitated, seeing a flash of colour on the other side of one of the fire doors. It was a bright colour, some iridescent pink that shone in the light as if someone was waving a flag or unfolding something big, and Savannah stepped closer to the thick, reinforced glass of the window.

On the other side, she saw a woman in a light brown suit, her hair tied up in a bun. She’d taken a minute to look at something on her phone, frowning down at it, and when she felt Savannah looking at her, she turned and caught her eye.

The woman’s eyes were a little larger than usual, taking up a great deal of her face and making her look a little bit reminiscent of a dragonfly, with a slight shine of pink eyeshadow highlighting them. Savannah blinked to herself, and then she took a step back, looking back to the expectant Angela.

“Sorry,” she said, shrugging. “Thought I saw something. So how many other wings of the hotel are there?”

“There’s four more wings that branch off the main bulk of the hotel, with one leading out to the car park, and then there are a few other outbuildings. You won’t be in any of the other wings, though, you’ll be here in the main body of the building.” Angela led the way down the stairs, and Savannah looked around the landing on the ground floor, taking in the signs nailed to the wall, pointing to the reception, the dining area, the gym, the car park… She hadn’t even realized there’d been a car park. You couldn’t see it from the street.

“Oh,” Savannah said. “Do you have other shifts to cover the rest of the wings? Sounds like a huge staff.”

“We do,” Angela said mildly, shrugging her shoulders. “The other wings require specialty cleaning services – non-chemical requirements, or hypoallergenic materials, things like that… We offer specialised service for those with disabilities, special needs, and so on, especially heightened sensitivities, allergies… Some of the other wings are without or have limited electricity access, so the cleaning services are altered. You couldn’t use a vacuum cleaner, for example, in the V-Wing, even a portable one.”

“People are sensitive to electricity?” Savannah asked.

“It’s the noise,” Angela said briskly. “There are frequencies that most people’s ears don’t register as noise – very high or very low pitch. A lot of electricity systems and electronic devices function on high frequencies. You wouldn’t hear it, I wouldn’t hear it, but some people hear it subconsciously so that it causes migraines, and some people are aware of it as a ringing in their ears or a barely audible noise.

“Some _other_ people, who have a hypersensitivity in their hearing or have trouble tuning out certain sounds – for example, those with autism or Sensory Processing Disorder – hear it as it sounds, and that stops them from sleeping at night, or even functioning normally in their day-to-day. The people in V-Wing, for the most part, are sensitive to certain sound, certain artificial smells – no perfumes, no strong cleaning chemicals, a different linen wash.”

“Is that what the Bayett caters to? Special requirements?”

“The only hotel in Bristol that caters to some of our clientele,” Angela said, and for just a moment, she smiled, like it was some private joke. “Come on. Let me show you the dining room.”

“You can come in and start on Monday,” Angela said. They’d toured the dining hall, and Angela had brought her through to the kitchen, the gym, the gardens. The hotel was impossibly big, and she was only seeing a small fraction of it, the parts that were for the main guests – without allergies, without _special requirements_. “If you like.”

“Please,” Savannah said. “Thank you for the long introduction, it’s— You didn’t have to. I’ll learn as quickly as I can.”

“You’ll learn as quickly as you’re able,” Angela said, and smiled at her. “You look a bit like him, you know. Like Jimmy.”

“Did you know him very well?” Savannah asked, and Angela hesitated for a long moment. They were in the main lobby of the hotel, making their way slowly toward the entrance, and Savannah watched a couple come in from outside. Angela didn’t answer: she was watching the couple very carefully, her expression intent.

It was two men, one holding an umbrella over the head of the other, and as they came into the entrance hall, one shook the umbrella delicately off. It was an old-fashioned sort, with a wooden frame and an ivory handle, the fabric a deep maroon, and the man, who was dark-haired and smaller than his companion, held it neatly at his side as he came forward, holding a small case primly at his other side. They both wore suits, but they couldn’t be more different, the taller man in a bright red suit with a white shirt, two-tone red and black shoes, the smaller one in a suit of uniform grey, his tie perfectly knotted and straight.

The taller man had dirty blond hair, tied loosely up in a bun at the top of his head, and he strode up to the front desk, speaking quietly to the girl on the reception as the smaller man followed after him. When the taller man reached back, he gently took the other by the tie, tugging him forward, and Savannah saw the smile on his face, the expression of quiet, professional irritation on the other man’s, until the taller man leaned in and kissed him.

“Is he his secretary or his boyfriend?” Savannah asked.

“Mr Coffey stays here at the Bayett, when he visits Bristol for business,” Angela answered. “Mr Essex is his husband, and secretary. Mr Essex would give you those two positions in a different order of importance.”

Essex’s unsmiling lips flickered into something _almost_ like a smile as Mr Coffey’s mouth pulled away from his, one hand cupping Essex’s cheek, their noses brushing against one another. Words were exchanged between them, the sort of intimate, quiet words you saw married people exchange at times, spoken under the breath, quietly.

“Have you ever been married?” Savannah asked, aware of the slight woodenness in her tone. She’d never quite gotten the hang of relationships. She liked the idea of it, the intimacy of knowing another person inside-out, of being in rhythm with someone, but it just never seemed to work out that way.

“No,” Angela said. “That sort of thing is…” She trailed off. Smiled. “I prioritise my family, I’m afraid. They come first.”

“Big family?”

“Very big.” Angela turned to look at Savannah, blinking a few times as if to pull herself back to the topic at hand. “I knew Jimmy as well as anybody knew him, I think. He was quite a private man – he would go through periods of being very eager to be in company, and long periods in between where he’d go elsewhere, disappear, do funny little things. You know that he was…”

“Ill,” Savannah offered, and Angela nodded her head briskly. “My mum used to worry it wasn’t alright, you know, for him to take me out unsupervised and that, but Dad always said Jimmy wasn’t… you know, violent, he wasn’t dangerous to anybody, not even to himself. He was just insular, when he was in one of his bad ways.”

“Insular,” Angela repeated. “Yes. I miss him, that’s all. I don’t mean to press on the matter.”

“I miss him too,” Savannah said. She touched the hem of her shirt, swallowing, and asked, “Is that— Is that why you offered me the job?”

“No,” Angela said. “I think you’ll work hard, I think you’ll be good in the position. The O’Callaghan name just stuck out in the pile, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” Savannah said, and shook Angela’s hand again. The man and his secretary were moving toward the main lift now, but a young woman had rushed up to take their suitcase and the umbrella, carrying it for them at a few paces behind. “See you Monday.”

“Monday,” Angela said. “Nine o’clock sharp.”

Nine o’clock it was.

It was hard work, at first. It felt like there was too much to remember – how to fold the sheets so that they’d stay on the mattress just like so, tightly drawn and with perfect corners; how to put the television remote, the phone, the kettle, the sachets of tea and coffee, the bottles of water, so that they were all at precisely the correct angle on the little desk, neatly displayed; how to fold the towels so that they hung in symmetry on the racks in the bathrooms.

There were two types of rooms to make over – _stayovers_ , meaning that the guest was still occupying the room, so the room just needed refreshing and a light clean, and _departures_ , meaning that the guests had inside had gone, and the room needed to be brought up to standard to be resold. They changed the sheets in occupied rooms every three days, as well as replacing used towels.

She would work with Ionut for the first few weeks, before she worked on her own, and it was nice work, talking back and forth with him as they went over the room together, with Ionut showing her precisely the way one thing was done. She liked how regular the hours were, liked how neatly kept to a schedule everything was – they had a certain number of rooms to do every day, a mix of one type and the other, but there were other housekeepers, dozens of them.

They filled the canteen, when they went down for their break and their lunch – the hotel served them breakfast and gave them lunch, as well, and there were so many different people. She’d sort of expected it to be mostly women, but there were a lot of men, too, and it seemed like everyone except her spoke four languages apiece. She had English and a bit of unpolished German, but when she sat in the canteen, she heard Russian, Polish, French, Spanish, Chinese – every language under the sun, it seemed like.

Two girls were even speaking Irish together, once, she was certain of it, but when she turned her head, they were already walking up the stairs, and she’d never caught what they looked like, let alone what their names were.

There was a lot to do. There was a lot to learn. So many new things she had to consider, when they went into a room, but one thing was taken care of. Whenever she and Ionut got to a new room to make it up, the sheets would already be stripped from the bed and brought to the laundry.

“Is it B-Team that does that?” Savannah asked, a few days after starting. They’d just arrived in a new departure, and were in the process of putting a quilt cover on the duvet, which was a soft and satiny blue – this was a much easier process, Ionut said, with two people rather than one. “Strip the beds, I mean?”

“Hm?” Ionut asked, glancing at her as he folded the end of the duvet into the sheet. “Oh, no, is the laundry team. They are coming in every departure room, they strip beds, take away laundry to go. They take dirty towels, sheets to be changed, pillowcases… All these things. This is why when we come, is empty. Obviously, if change sheets in stayovers, we take those laundry.”

They did. They had laundry bags that were made of a strong, white fabric, very tightly woven and surprisingly light when you picked it up: once they put the old sheets and towels into them, they tossed the bags down the laundry chutes, which were periodically placed along the walls in the hotel.

“Isn’t that expensive?” Savannah asked as she took up a rag, beginning to work on polishing surfaces. “To have a dedicated team just for stripping off the beds?”

“No,” Ionut said. “They are… Hm. We do not hire them, exactly. They work here in hotel, we pay wages, but they are from laundry company… They help us, we get discount on big laundry orders… is symbiotic, yes?”

“Symbiotic,” Savannah repeated, turning it over in her head. “Right. I guess I just thought we had our own laundry on site. We send all the linen out? But that’s thousands and thousands of bedsheets and towels and that in a week.”

“Is better deal to go with Hypaepa Laundry,” Ionut said, sounding assured, as if he’d thought about this in detail. “We have space for laundry downstairs, yes, but we only do special sheets by hand. Everything else go to Hypaepa, and we don’t have to hire anybody except laundry strippers, who also take deliveries back to laundry site. Some hotels, you know, they rent their linens _from_ laundry, on basis that laundry washes and replaces.”

“I never see the laundry strippers,” Savannah said.

Ionut shrugged. “Nor do I,” he replied.

“Ah, do forgive me,” said a voice, and Savannah turned her head, meeting the gaze of Henry Coffey. Mr Essex stood at his shoulder, holding a briefcase very neatly in his hands, as though he had been designed to hold it. It looked very right and correct there, and Savannah had a difficult moment of concentration as she tried to imagine him without it. “I wondered— You’re Savannah, aren’t you? Jimmy O’Callaghan’s niece?”

“Yeah,” Savannah said, and she neatly set the towels in her hand aside, putting out her hand to shake. Coffey’s hand was slightly cool to the touch, and the meat of his palm was stiff and hard, as though it was all made of callous, but smooth as marble. “You’re Mr Coffey and Mr Essex, right? Angela pointed you out.”

“That’s right,” Coffey murmured. “Goodness, you’re so tall now. You look a little like him, you know, like Jimmy.”

“We’ve met before?” Savannah asked, her head tilting, her lips parting, but Coffey shook his head.

“We saw you at the funeral,” Essex said quietly, solemnly. “You were only young, then.”

“Oh,” Savannah said, her voice soft. “Sorry, I didn’t really… remember…”

She thought about it, the funeral. She remembered there being a lot of people, a lot more than she expected. The family was there, of course, her and her parents, and some friends of Jimmy’s that she knew – a few other handymen, some women that he’d known, Aunt Greta, who was in her eighties, and died not long after Jimmy did. But then there had been lots of people she hadn’t known, that she hadn’t recognised…

Coffey and Essex were among them, she supposed. Angela, too, probably. Who else? Who else had she just not noticed?

“He’d be very proud of you,” Coffey said. “He never used to stop talking about you, you know. His wonderful niece, who was so smart, who he was certain would hold the world in her hands one day. His world revolved around the days he spent with you.”

Savannah was surprised at the sudden prickling heat of the tears in her eyes, and Coffey’s face fell, immediately rushing to remove the handkerchief from his breast pocket to offer it.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said hurriedly, and she took the dark red square of silk, surprised by the softness of the black lacing at its edges, and she wiped at the corners of her eyes, breathing in hard to keep from sniffling. “I merely meant—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Savannah said. “Sorry. It’s nice to have said. Thank you. I didn’t know… I was just a kid, you know, I didn’t think about it like that. I guess I always thought of it as him putting up with me, babysitting when my parents were busy.” The words tumbled out of her, perhaps because she’d never talked about it before, but she didn’t mean to say them so bluntly, and to someone she didn’t even _know_ —

“No,” Coffey said, shaking his head emphatically. “No, not ever, dear girl. He’d have brought you the moon on a string if you’d so much as mentioned it in passing, I have no doubt.” 

She handed back the handkerchief, and she watched the way Essex’s hand landed on Coffey’s forearm. He leaned in to murmur in the other man’s ear, and Coffey glanced at him, but then he nodded his head.

“We’ll leave you to your work,” Coffey murmured. “It was good to speak with you.”

“You too,” Savannah echoed, not really knowing if she meant it or not, and she took a deep, steadying breath as she turned back to the towels. She didn’t remember much about the funeral. She knew there’d been a big wake, but that they’d not stayed for very long – Dad hadn’t liked a lot of Jimmy’s friends, or something.

Something.

Savannah went digging, at home, for Jimmy’s bag of stones. She thought, when she started looking for them, that they’d be difficult to find, that they’d be buried in the box of something right at the back of a wardrobe, but they were waiting for her on the top of a box of old clothes, settled neatly on top of a folded blanket printed with stars, nestled there as though on a cushion for presentation.

The black velvet bag showed the shape of the stones inside, bulging slightly, the golden ribbon puckering the fabric where it drew the bag shut, and she picked it up, hearing the soft click of the stones inside.

He’d left them to her in his will, and she remembered the aftermath of her parents going to the will reading, bringing them home to her. She’d been curled up on the sofa with a cup of hot cocoa going hold between her hands, not really listening to the noise on the radio, and they’d come through the door still wet from the sleet outside.

Dad had been quiet and solemn, and it had been Mum who’d set the cocoa aside and gently placed them in her hands, and said, “Jimmy wanted you to have these, Sav.”

There’d been a note tucked into the bag.

_Dear Sav,_

_My mother gave these to me when I was a little bit younger than you, and I wanted to pass them on. Practise with them, if you want to – I’ve taught you bits and pieces, but you’ll learn on your own if you practice with them. Don’t feel you have to, though – forget them, if it suits you._

_Just remember to watch what you ask them for. You listen to these stones, my girl, but they’ll listen back._

_Love,_

_Jimmy_

She’d never practised with them much, in the end. She’d practised a little bit, but her dad had gotten upset whenever he’d seen her working with them – not that he ever told her _not_ to use them, just that it made him sad, she thought. After the third or fourth time she saw her dad’s face when he saw the stones, the expression drawn and tight and full of distaste, she’d put them away.

She held the velvet bag in her hands, running her fingers gently over the fabric, and she hazily remembered playing with them with Jimmy. It had seemed like a complete mystery, the way he did it – he’d roll them like dice, and he’d _know_ things, know all sorts of things… The Grand National was only a fragment of it. He could predict the weather, sports outcomes… It seemed like he knew everything, if he wanted to, if the stones wanted to tell him.

Savannah had just believed it all when she was a kid, and it was only when she was older that she’d started trying to explain it away. Uncle Jimmy was a man of many talents, after all – he had a barometer and some funny instruments on his balcony, and he could have done the weather like that. He knew people at the racecourse, too, and he knew people in football and rugby, could probably get tips on some stuff…

And sometimes, when he asked the stones something more specific, it must have just been a good guess. She remembered, once, when she was twelve or so, saying that the stones were nonsense, and Jimmy had laughed at her.

She’d said, “Go on, then, _prove_ it. If the stones are really real, and they really tell you things, what’s the answer to… Question 16 on my maths test tomorrow?”

He’d rolled the stones, smiled at her with a bright grin, and said, “x = 144, Sav.”

She’d missed the maths test. They’d gotten stuck in traffic.

Pulling the drawstring, Savannah emptied the stones out onto the wooden surface of her coffee table. There were bone white, washed to opal smoothness by the ocean – Jimmy said they’d been handpicked three hundred years ago by one of their ancestors, diving beneath the Cliffs of Moher. He’d said a puffin had helped collect them, because puffins couldn’t tell the difference between stones and pearls.

She smiled slightly, putting out her palm and feeling some of the stones beneath her skin, marvelling at how cool they felt. They were each only about the size of a marble, although not as evenly shaped, and there were twenty-three of them. That was an important number, she remembered him telling her, twenty-three. It was the number the stones had for her, he’d said.

She couldn’t remember why.

“Why do you wear them like that?” she’d asked Jimmy, once. Whenever he went anywhere, he had the stones in their bag, attached to his hip. They never came loose, not ever, and sometimes, if she listened very closely, she could hear their quiet click against one another as he walked, the bag shifting in its place from his belt.

“So I can hear what they tell me,” Jimmy had said with a wink, and she’d laughed. They’d been at the zoo that day, Savannah recalled, and they’d spent over an hour in the bat enclosure, sitting silently together, watching the bats flap and fly overhead.

They’d played games with the stones, hadn’t they?

Tossing them like dice, making up readings from the stones as she threw them, with Jimmy egging her on; spinning them on their ends like tops, when it felt like they were spinning for ages and ages; blindfolding Jimmy and then tossing the stones at him, and he _always_ caught them.

Savannah had wanted to try, and they were going to, they were going to, but they never got around to it. The memory cut at her.

Closing her eyes, she threw one of the stones up and into the air.

It was like her hands moved without waiting for her permission, their palms cupping and moving to the left, nowhere _near_ where she’d meant to throw it, but the pebble dropped softly into her cupped palms. She exhaled.

“I’m supposed to listen to you, now, I think,” she said. “See what you have to say.”

The pebble felt impossibly cold against her skin, and so much heavier than it should, for such a little stone.

“Excuse me,” said a smooth, cultured voice behind her, and Savannah turned, expecting to see Henry Coffey again, but it wasn’t him. She was folding up new linen to go on her and Ionut’s trolley, but it wasn’t like it was uncommon for guests to ask questions of the housekeepers, when they saw them in the corridor.

This guest was tall – though not as tall as her – and haughty-looking, handsome, but for some reason it was handsome in an unsettling way. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something about his face, the way he held himself, that unsettled her, like it was digging right into some old instinct and twisting it around. He was _gorgeous_ , with dark, deep-set green eyes, plump lips in a well-defined cupid’s bow, high, defined cheekbones, his hair artfully windswept. He looked more like a portrait than a person, and it made her teeth itch.

“ _Do_ forgive me,” he said, voice dripping like honey. “But could you point me back to my wing? This place is utterly maze-like, I’m quite lost.”

“Sure,” Savannah said, taking a step forward. The velvet bag of stones clicked against her hip, a surprisingly comforting weight, once she set them on her belt, and it felt like they were grounding her. “What’s your room number?”

“23-C?”

“Oh, that’s the central rooms,” Savannah said. “They’re all down on the ground floor – so if you go down this stairwell, down two flights, and then walk forward, and follow the signs to the dining hall? Then, once you get there—”

“I do apologise, but I’m simply awful with directions,” he said. “Could you show me?”

She was distracted by the stones, so heavy it felt, for just a moment, like they were rooting her in her place. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said slightly clumsily, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth, not looking away from the deep brown of his eyes, like a shadow in a wood, “I’m afraid I can’t leave my trolley unattended.” It was a smooth lie, easy, and he smiled. His teeth were preternaturally white, polished like pearls.

“You look _so_ like a man I used to know,” the man said. “James O’Callaghan.”

The stones felt so heavy now that her hand went to the bag, and the man’s smile widened as she gripped tightly at the white stones through the velvet, inhaling. “That was my uncle Jimmy,” Savannah said, slowly.

“Ah,” the man purred, glancing down, and she followed his gaze to see him step closer. He wore brown leather brogues, polished to a bright shine. “So those would be _his_ stones, then.”

“My stones now,” Savannah replied, and the words came out sharper than she expected them to. It felt callous to say, but it was like the words were settled on her tongue from memory, like she was working from a script she’d already worked to remember. She concentrated on the stones, imagining that they were radiating cold, that they were pushing a chill right up her side and down the side of her waist, as if to distract her, calm her down.

The man chuckled. “So they are,” he murmured. “I knew him before his funny little accident, you know. He was like you – _wilful_ , you know.”

“Before he fell off that ladder, you mean?” she demanded, and she was surprised by how angry she felt, furious that he’d say it so _callously_ when he was a sick man who was kind and tried his best, and she knew it was the wrong thing to say. The bastard’s eyes were shining with delight.

The man’s smile widened. “Fell off a _ladder_?” he repeated, sounding all but gleeful. Savannah felt a twisting nausea in her belly, as if her intestines were tangling themselves into knots. “My dear girl, no, he—”

“Mr Tara,” said Angela, coming down the corridor with a purposeful stride, holding her clipboard under one arm. “Got lost on the way to your room?”

“Happens every time,” Mr Tara said softly. The smile had dropped from his face, and Savannah was almost relieved – he wasn’t quite so overpoweringly handsome, when he wasn’t smiling. His emerald eyes turned flinty as he looked at Angela, and as he stepped back and away from her, Savannah felt herself relax. “This _dear_ young lady was giving me directions, but I fear I can’t make head nor tail of them.”

“Down those stairs,” Angela said. “Follow the signs for the dining hall.”

“I see,” Mr Tara murmured, taking a slow step back. “Off I go, then.”

“Off you go,” Angela agreed, in a voice like steel.

Mr Tara turned his back, and Savannah let out the breath she’d been holding tight to her chest, the exhalation coming out in a fast rush, and she looked to Angela, who came close, but didn’t reach out, didn’t touch her. She looked like she wanted to lay a comforting hand on Savannah’s shoulder, but held herself back, and for a moment, Savannah almost wanted her to.

“You ignore Mr Tara,” Angela advised. “He’s the sort of man who thinks the world belongs to him.”

“He knew Jimmy.”

“Jimmy hated him,” Angela said lowly. “As you can imagine. He’s only here for a few days on business – if he comes to you again, don’t speak to him, just walk away. You can always do that, if you feel you’re under threat, you can walk away from a guest and go find one of the other housekeepers, or call down to me or one of the other managers. If you _really_ think you’re in danger, there’s always the laundry chutes.”

Savannah laughed, relieved at the way it came from her throat, the sound low and soft, and Angela smiled at her.

“Really,” she said brightly. “The chute pipes are stiffened fabric on a flexible frame, they’re not metal, like you’d see in a lot of hotels. They drop down into cloth bins, it’s a guaranteed soft landing.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” Savannah said, and Angela smiled, gently patting Savannah’s shoulder. The stones at her waist felt light, now, lighter than ever.

“Savannah, where are you?” demanded Ionut, appearing from down the corridor with the box of soaps he’d gone to get. “Ah, here, girl, take,” he said, and shoved the soaps into her hands. “We go to lunch now.”

“Alright, Ionut,” Savannah murmured, and Ionut glanced to Angela, his handsome brow furrowing.

“There is problem?”

“No problem,” Savannah said. She pulled three of the stones from the bag, and as they walked down to the canteen, she rolled them in her palm, feeling the opaline smoothness of them against her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> The plan with this work, as I did with [Heart of Stone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25135384), is to publish chapter by chapter and then publish as an eBook for sale!
> 
> I'd love some feedback on my original work if you're keeping up with it, and there's [a little Google form here](https://forms.gle/LdUkXFkrTs6YFxxKA). 
> 
> Totally check out my [Tumblr](https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/), and feel free to join the [Discord](https://discord.gg/vZ27uun) I have for my writing!


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